The Appalachian roots music that Kathy Mattea has been making in recent years seems tailor made for MerleFest, the popular acoustic music festival held each April in Wilkesboro, N.C.

Surprisingly, it’s been several years since Mattea has performed at the festival, which honors the memory of the late Merle Watson, the guitar-picking son of legendary roots musician Doc Watson.

“I would love to play this music in that particular place,” Mattea said, referring to material from her latest two albums, 2008’s “Coal” and the newly released “Calling Me Home.”

In the meantime, Mattea will give an intimate performance Friday at the Diana Wortham Theatre in Asheville, N.C.

When Mattea and I chatted on the phone last week, she reminisced about an experience she had at MerleFest in the early 1990s.

“My favorite MerleFest moment was sitting backstage with Doc, and I was learning a tune that he and Merle used to play, an instrumental called ‘Windy and Warm’ that was (famously recorded) by Chet Atkins.

“And I was just getting into it, so I played a little bit of it for him really slow. He said, ‘keep practicing, you’ll get it, you’ll get it.’ He was just so sweet about it.”

Doc Watson died in May, only a month after making his final MerleFest appearance.

“I think that he embodied something that’s also in Hazel Dickens and Jean Ritchie,” Mattea said, referring to Doc along with a pair of seminal female Appalachian folk musicians, whose songs she covered on her last two albums.

“When Doc came up playing, it wasn’t about commercialism. It was just about playing. And, so, there’s a way that music is grounded in the way he plays. It’s not like he’s going out and performing; he’s just going out and being Doc Watson. You get the feeling that he’s the same Doc Watson that he was in somebody’s living room as a kid.

“There’s kind of a lack of self-consciousness about it that’s so beautiful and so kind of innocent. There’s a real innocence to the music that’s very pure, and I don’t know that my generation will ever be able to have that because we grew up with radio and TV and all that.

“I think that’s a really precious thing that was lost, not to even mention the whole depth of talent that he had. Oh my gosh, what a beautiful man.”

I then brought up someone that I found, in a similar sense, to be a “beautiful woman” – Country Music Hall of Famer Kitty Wells, who died in July.

“Kitty Wells influenced every female in country music – any kind of country music – whether they know it or not,” Mattea responded.

“… When I got to Nashville, I worked at the Hall of Fame in my early years as a kid here, and so I dug into the history and I got to really learn about Kitty Wells and Bob Wills and all these people who had been pioneers in different aspects of country music.

“I don’t know if it’s possible for our generation to really appreciate what Kitty Wells actually did in the time that she was living. She was the first feminist in country music. I mean, the power in her standing up and singing (“It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”) was iconic, and I was really glad to see that people spent the time to remember her when she passed.”

Having gotten enough material for the article that would appear in the print version of the Herald-Journal, I began to say my goodbyes when Mattea interjected, “I have to tell you my Spartanburg story.”

Obviously, my curiosity was piqued.

“It was probably over 20 years ago, and I was playing a festival in Spartanburg and a huge thunderstorm came through, big time,” Mattea said. “It was really dangerous. And they shut off the power for a while; they shut down the music for a while. Lightning struck a utility pole and hit a guy in the chest, but he was OK. He would come to shows for years after that and would always send a note back to me.

“Anyway, there were about 1,000 people under umbrellas who would not leave. So, we went and did our set. I didn’t put on my show clothes. I left my tennis shoes on because they had rubber soles and I figured that they would maybe save me if something happened with the microphone.

“… I just remember that audience so well and how completely dedicated they were. It’s something that’s stuck with me for a long time.”

Turns out I’d actually heard that story during her wonderful performance at The Handlebar in Greenville in 2009.

Since Mattea had brought up Spartanburg, I tossed out the names of some Hub City natives who became well known Nashville-based musicians.

“I was having breakfast years ago with a dear friend of mine I used to do recording sessions with. We were sitting at the Pancake Pantry in Nashville, and Marshall Chapman comes over. My friend is like a prim and proper Vandy girl, kind of a preppy girl.

“And, so, Marshall – who, of course, is just like this wild rock ‘n’ roll chick – comes walking over and says hello to my friend and leaves. And I looked at my friend and said, ‘how do you know Marshall Chapman?’ And she said, ‘we were sorority sisters at Vanderbilt.’”

Mattea laughed uproariously upon completing that last sentence. “I guess we all have past lives,” she added.

Referring to Chapman, Mattea said, “I really like the idea of somebody being badass and well-educated at the same time.”

At this point, I brought up David Ball and the late Walter Hyatt, two other musicians from Spartanburg who made a splash in Nashville.

“I didn’t know Walter, but Walter passed away while I was making a record in Upstate New York,” Mattea said. “We were out in the country in an old stone barn, mixing this record, and our assistant engineer had been really close to him. So, that whole experience was sort of a memorial to Walter for us, and I got to learn a lot more about him from just being there with this guy who revered him and loved him so much.

“And David Ball, I did some gigs with him when he had his big hits out. I even shared a fiddle player with him for a time and knew him well.”

I told Mattea about the Spartanburg Music Trail, which opened last year and honors Hub City natives whose music impacted the world with signs throughout downtown. I mentioned that such artists as Hank Garland, Ira Tucker and the Marshall Tucker Band were inaugural inductees, and that nominees for future induction include legendary banjo picker Buck Trent.

“That’s great,” Mattea said. “You know, they started a West Virginia Music Hall of Fame a few years ago. I got inducted last year, and I’m going to induct Tim O’Brien next year. … I have to say there was this moment when I was standing there, and I thought, ‘this is a beautiful full circle thing’ – to be recognized by the people who launched you into this world and who made the community (in which) you got to develop your talent.

“… And for them to go, ‘hey, we’re really glad you made it,’ that means a lot. And I think it’s really important. It’s important for the young people coming up to think, ‘well, if they can do that, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can dream bigger.’

“There was nothing like that when I was coming up. So, I think having something like (the Spartanburg Music Trail) is really great. You never know. Some young banjo player might go and research Buck Trent and start learning what he did and get inspiration from that and press into something that he wouldn’t have otherwise.”

I told Mattea that each Music Trail sign includes a phone number people can call to hear music samples along with a brief narrative read by Spartanburg native Peter Cooper, now a respected singer-songwriter and music columnist in Nashville.

“I said to him, ‘you’ve got the best of both worlds now,’” Mattea said. “‘You get to do music and you get to write about what you want to write about on your own terms.’ I just really think he’s a pretty special guy.”

Mattea also brought up the fact that her husband, Jon Vezner, has lately been writing songs with Cooper.

“The two them are like each other’s biggest admirers,” she said. “They come up with different stuff together that neither one of them would alone, so it’s really neat.”

Here’s a link to a story on Mattea that was published today by the Herald-Journal and GoUpstate.com:

About This Blog

Dan Armonaitis has been writing about music since the mid-1990s and has been listening to the stuff even longer. Although most of his favorite records were made before he was born, he is always eager to discover something new.

The primary focus of this blog is to take music fans beyond the entertainment pages of the Herald-Journal, but don’t be surprised by an occasional post about another of his lifelong passions: baseball.

Dan thinks it’s kind of neat that his mother has the distinction of having seen live concerts by Hank Williams, Hank Williams Jr. and Hank Williams III and that his grandmother is buried in the same cemetery as Shoeless Joe Jackson.